implementing transparency report from the nao

8/2/2019 Implementing Transparency Report from the NAO

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Cross-government review

Implementing transparency

REPORT BY THECOMPTROLLER ANDAUDITOR GENERAL

HC 1833

SESSION 20102012

18 APRIL 2012


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The National Audit Ofce scrutinises public spending on behal

o Parliament. The Comptroller and Auditor General, Amyas Morse,

is an Ofcer o the House o Commons. He is the head o the NAO,

which employs some 880 sta. He and the NAO are totally independent

o government. He certifes the accounts o all government departments

and a wide range o other public sector bodies; and he has statutory

authority to report to Parliament on the economy, efciency and

eectiveness with which departments and other bodies have used their

resources. Our work led to savings and other efciency gains worth

more than 1 billion in 2010-11.

Our vision is to help the nation spend wisely.

We apply the unique perspective o public audit

to help Parliament and government drive lasting

improvement in public services.


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Ordered by the House o Commons

to be printed on 16 April 2012

Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General

HC 1833 Session 20102012

18 April 2012

London: The Stationery Oce

16.00

This report has been

prepared under Section 6

o the National Audit Act

1983 or presentation to

the House o Commons

in accordance with

Section 9 o the Act.

Amyas Morse

Comptroller and

Auditor General

National Audit Oce

13 April 2012

Cross-government review

Implementing transparency


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Successive governments have promoted

transparency by developing legislation and

routinely releasing more inormation to the

public. The transparency agenda is a pledge by

the Coalition Government to make governmentmore open.

National Audit Ofce 2012

The text o this document may be reproduced ree o charge in

any ormat or medium providing that it is reproduced accurately

and not in a misleading context.

The material must be acknowledged as National Audit Ofce

copyright and the document title specifed. Where third party

material has been identifed, permission rom the respective

copyright holder must be sought.

Printed in the UK or the Stationery Ofce Limited

on behal o the Controller o Her Majestys Stationery Ofce

2487106 04/12 PRCP


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Contents

Key acts 4

Summary 5

Part One

Introduction 12

Part Two

Progress o implementing

transparency 15

Part Three

Aligning transparency with

choice and accountability 22

Part Four

Aligning transparency with

economic growth 29

Appendix One

Methodology 33

Appendix Two

Timeline o transparency

achievements and uture

aspirations 34

Endnotes 39

The National Audit Oce study team

consisted o:

Anthony Byrtus, Milly Cottam,

Rory Crew, Daniel Lambauer,

Mohit Parmar, Andrew Sharman

and Nigel Terrington, under the

direction o Nick Sloan.

This report can be ound on the

National Audit Oce website at

www.nao.org.uk/transparency-2012phs

courtesy o

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

For urther inormation about the

National Audit Oce please contact:

National Audit Oce

Press Oce

157197 Buckingham Palace Road

Victoria

London

SW1W 9SP

Tel: 020 7798 7400

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.nao.org.uk

Twitter: @NAOorguk


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4 Key acts Implementing transparency

Key acts

23 out o 25 commitments or central government, due by December 2011, were

met by that month

53,000 to

500,000

is the range o estimated sta costs per department in providing the

standard transparency releases required o all departments

84 per cent is the increase in web views to school perormance inormationcompared with the same period in the previous year, since the

Department or Education published its school compare web tool

82 per cent o www.data.gov.uk users leave the website directly rom the

homepage or data page

78 per cent o data elds or departmental spending data ully comply with

HM Treasury guidance

75 per cent o data resources on www.data.gov.uk are machine-readable and

non-proprietary, attributes sucient or the majority o tasks needed

to develop applications

16bnis the Governments

estimate o the value

o public sector

inormation to the UK

economy in 2011

7,865data sets were linked

to the www.data.gov.uk

website in December 2011

47mestimated number o

visits made to the police

crime map website

between February and

December 2011


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Implementing transparency Summary 5

Summary

Introduction and purpose o report

1 Successive governments have promoted transparency by developing legislation

and routinely releasing more inormation to the public. The transparency agenda is

a pledge by the Coalition Government to make government more open. The policy

commitment has been taken orward through three major announcements. The rst

two were communicated through prime ministerial letters to government departments

in May 2010 and Secretaries o State in July 2011. Additional commitments were

announced as part o the ChancellorsAutumn Statement 2011, in November 2011.

Initial data releases related primarily to accountability or use o resources, with later

announcements designed to support service improvement and economic growth.

The Governments objectives or transparency are to:

strengthen public accountability;

support public service improvement by generating more comparative data andincreasing user choice; and

stimulate wider economic growth by helping third parties to develop products and

services based on public sector inormation.

2 Good quality inormation is crucial to eective management. Public disclosure o

that inormation has the potential to improve accountability and support public service

improvement and economic growth. Gaining value rom inormation, however, requires

its scope, quality and presentation to be matched to the purposes and circumstances

o its use. This report reviews early implementation o the transparency initiatives set out

in the prime ministerial letters, and considers arrangements in place to judge value or

money, to establish key lessons that the Government should address:

Part One introduces the background and sets out how transparency is governed.

Part Two considers the progress o implementation to date.

Part Three reviews how transparency aligns with choice and accountability.

Part Four considers the economic growth potential o transparency.


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6 Summary Implementing transparency

Key fndings

Governance

3 The Cabinet Ofce plays the lead role in promoting transparency across

government. It is responsible or coordinating and monitoring implementation,

secretariat support to a Public Sector Transparency Board, bringing together ocials

to embed transparency across government, and providing guidance on some o the

releases required o all government departments. Many other bodies also play signicant

roles in implementing transparency, including other departments who are responsible or

their own data releases, The National Archives, the Inormation Commissioners Oce

and bodies in the wider public sector.

4 Governance arrangements have secured coordinated action, but have

not yet ocused on achieving value or money. The transparency agenda under

this Government began as a coalition pledge with associated actions required o all

departments to implement the policy: the Cabinet Oce did not prepare an overall

policy impact assessment at the outset. As the scope o the transparency agenda has

developed, the Cabinet Oce has published examples o the benets o public data

initiatives to support the strategic case or transparency, or example on its Open or

Business website, but has not yet systematically assessed the costs and benets o

the Governments specic transparency initiatives. The Government announced in

theAutumn Statement 2011 the creation o an Open Data Institute. Early plans or the

Institute include a role to develop a uller evidence base on the economic and public

service benets o open data.

Progress o implementation

5 The Cabinet Ofce, in partnership with departments, has signifcantly

increased the amount and type o public sector inormation released and met

a high proportion o its commitments. Twenty-three out o twenty-ve commitments

or central government in the Prime Ministers letters due by December 2011 had

been met. The www.data.gov.uk website, launched by the previous Government in

January 2010, indexes public data releases. The number o data sets catalogued within

www.data.gov.uk has grown rom 2,500 in January 2010 to 7,865 in December 2011.

6 To date, compliance with transparency good practices has been mixed.

The advisory Transparency Board developed a drat set o public data principles, which

outline good practice or releasing and presenting inormation. Compliance with some

principles is strong. Most o the data releases on www.data.gov.uk are openly available

or re-use, with 86 per cent published under the Open Government Licence and

three-quarters in ormats whereby data can easily be reprocessed. However, in other

areas there has been less progress. For example, the Cabinet Oce has not yet dened

how departments should prepare and disclose data inventories to acilitate wider use.


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7 The transparency agenda itsel does not defne requirements concerningdata quality disclosure. The Cabinet Ofce has deerred the commitment or

departments to produce data quality action plans rom November 2011 to

May 2012, to incorporate them in the next versions o departmental Business

Plans. Data released under the transparency agenda ranges rom audited gures and

National Statistics data, subject to data protocols and reviews, through to administrative

sources o varying status. In some cases, there are judgements to be made between

speed o release and data quality. For example, the Treasurys guidance on spending

data publication states that to produce timely data, inormation should be released as

it was originally recorded in nancial systems, unless there are material changes to the

data. While the Treasury has urged departments to improve the quality o the spend

data, and has required all main departments to produce data quality improvement plans,

it has not required them to disclose the level o data quality to the public. The lack o

common categorisation o spending, and late publication o data by many departments,

hinder comparability.

Supporting choice and accountability

8 I transparency is to better inorm choice and accountability, appropriate

data must be available in the frst place. There is variation in the scope and

completeness o inormation currently available. In some areas this limits the

potential benefts.

a With respect to inormation supporting individual choice, in education the

department collects and reports appropriate inormation to support parents in

choosing schools. In social care, by contrast, neither the Department o Health nor

its unded bodies collect and publish appropriate inormation on the comparative

costs and perormance o providers o community based care services or adults.

This data could help to support users in choosing how to spend personalised

budgets. While much o the data in this sector is held by private providers, the

Governments Open Public Services 2012 White Paper commits to publishing key

data about public services, user satisaction and the perormance o all providers

rom all sectors.

b With regards to community accountability, the police crime map provides much

more detailed recorded crime inormation than was previously available. However,

additional inormation is still needed, or example on police activity and resourcing

locally, or residents to hold neighbourhood police services to account more ully.

In local government, the Government has discontinued established perormance

rameworks. The local government sector is leading a new approach to dening

key indicators. It is not currently clear whether this approach will yield sucient

comparable perormance inormation to support meaningul public accountability.


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Stimulating economic growth

9 The Government estimates that public data currently contributes 16 billion

annually to the UK economy. While this is the highest o the ew estimates

available o the scale o the public data market, all suggest that public data

holds economic value. TheAutumn Statement 2011 announced new transparency

commitments designed to extract additional economic growth rom public data,

including open data releases, arrangements or licensing specic large data sets and

commitments to consult. Commitments include releases o data not previously available,

and opening access to data previously traded. TheAutumn Statement 2011 also made a

commitment to establish the Open Data Institute which aims to help businesses exploit

opportunities created by public data release.

10 The Governments ability to maximise economic growth rom traded data

is constrained by current charging and licensing arrangements, and limited

understanding o potential benefts. Recent academic research indicates that making

all public inormation that is currently traded available without charge could potentially add

economic value in the region o 1.6 billion to 6.0 billion a year. The Government has

identied certain trading unds, such as the Met Oce and Ordnance Survey, as having

data that could stimulate additional economic growth i it was released as open data. The

business case or the releases o ree data announced in the Autumn Statement 2011

estimates net benets o 49 million over 20 years a small proportion o the value

estimated to be available across the public sector. Estimates o additional value arebased on highly uncertain assumptions about usage, demand and impacts on the

wider economy.

Elements needed to assess value or money

11 Departments have not monitored the costs o implementing transparency,

and have estimated costs only where associated with investment requiring a

business case. Estimates provided or this review suggest that the additional sta costs

o providing standard disclosures o pre-existing data range rom 53,000 to 500,000

annually by department. Examples, such as the police crime map, where departments

have repackaged inormation to promote greater accessibility and use has led to

urther costs: in this case set-up costs o 300,000 and annual running costs o more

than 150,000. However, there are also cases such as the releases o public weather

service data where the costs are minimal. While these costs are relatively modest, they

would be more substantial i additional inormation were collected to secure purposeul,

standardised inormation to ll the gaps noted in paragraph 8. Pursuit o transparency

objectives is thereore likely to increase cost pressures.


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12 Few departments are tracking benefts o transparency a key requirementin monitoring success and learning what works. Public interest in dierent types

o data release has varied widely. The website www.data.gov.uk has had more than

1.75 million visits since it was launched in January 2010. However, more than our-ths

o its visitors leave rom either the home page or the data page on the website. This

suggests that they are not accessing data during their visit, although it does not take

account o other potential access points or the data, or example, linked third party

websites or applications. While many departments told us that there had been limited

interest in the standard releases, there has been much greater interest in releases

related to the operation o public services. The police crime map website has had an

estimated 47 million visits between February and December 2011. The Department or

Education has reported an 84 per cent increase in the use o its comparative data on

schools, compared with the same period last year, since it was consolidated in one

location and data were made more accessible.

13 Alongside potential benefts rom transparency, departments ace

risks, including:

risks to privacy when inormation is provided at more granular levels. Departments

have conducted privacy risk assessments where they saw privacy as an issue.

More generally, the Government commissioned an independent review to consider

how transparency can proceed while privacy is protected. The Cabinet Oce

intends to respond to its recommendations in a orthcoming White Paper;

raud risks with increased transparency around contracts and payment details

raud attempts to a value o 7 million directly related to transparency releases

have been ound in local government, highlighting the need or eective anti-raud

measures; and

other potential unintended consequences o transparency. Given the breadth

o inormation released as part o the transparency agenda, it is likely that wider

unintended consequences might result, but the Government has done little to identiy

or assess the nature and scale o any such eects, either benign or adverse.


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Conclusion

14 The strategic case or greater transparency is strong. I it is to do more than satisy

public rights to public inormation, however, and contribute ully to objectives set or it

including accountability, service improvement, and growth, then the Government needs

a rmer grip on measuring the success o the initiative. While it has begun to gather

evidence o usage and benets arising rom the use o open data, it has not yet positioned

this within a wider, systematic evaluative ramework. Evidence on benets should be

considered alongside inormation on costs and risks to secure best value rom the large

stock o public data, match the range and presentation o data purposeully to ull specic

objectives, ensure that risks are identied and mitigated, and secure value or money.

Recommendations

a The Government cannot maximise the net benefts o transparency without

an evaluative ramework or measuring the success and value or money o

its transparency initiatives. It should build on its plans to identiy economic and

public service benets and develop:

a better understanding o the drivers and scale o additional costs o

implementing dierent types o public sector inormation release;

clearer means o determining demand to support objectives o greater

accountability, service improvement and economic growth, to prioritise the

programme o data release; and

a structured, objective evaluation o the emerging eects o transparent public

data, so that eorts are ocused on high-value activities, with unintended

consequences mitigated.

b The Government will not maximise the benefts o transparency i it does not

urther embed good practice principles. While the drat public data principles

set a useul direction or public bodies, the Government should now dene its

operational requirements more clearly. Areas such as developing data inventories

require clear direction so that they lead to benets or developers and the public.

c Many data releases have no accompanying statement as to their quality or

reliability running the risk o misleading potential users. The Government

should develop a simple protocol or describing data sources, control procedures

and known limitations.


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d Public service users cannot exercise their choice and hold service providersto account i the Government ails to align transparency with choice and

accountability. It should:

review whether current data or choice and accountability purposes are

adequate, identiying gaps and ensuring that there is a clear strategy to make

necessary inormation available.

in developing and operating markets or public services, build requirements

or greater transparency o nancial and perormance inormation in uture

contractual arrangements.

e The Government cannot extract best value rom public sector inormation,i it does not improve on current estimates o the inormations value. These

estimates vary widely, hindering precise assessment o the various nancial

and economic actors associated with urther data releases, especially where

the Government currently charges or inormation. The Government should pursue

its plans or the development o a research base on the economic and public

service benets o public data, and use that to target the nature and orm o

data releases.

The Government has identifed that protecting personal data is a key risk or

transparency, commissioning a review to consider the issue. In responding

to the reviews recommendations, it should set out governance structures andprocesses required to manage this risk eectively.


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12 Part One Implementing transparency

Part One

Introduction

1.1 Successive governments have promoted more transparency o public sector

inormation. This has involved developing legislation, or example on reedomo inormation, and releasing more public sector inormation. Transparency is a

key component o the current Governments public services reorm programme.

The benets it expects to achieve include:

helping the public to hold public bodies to account;

improving value or money o public services; and

realising economic benets by helping third parties to develop applications

and services rom public data.1

Current government commitments

1.2 The Government has made three major policy announcements on transparency.

The Prime Minister wrote two open letters to government departments in May 2010

and Secretaries o State in July 2011. Figure 1 sets out key releases that all central

government departments have been asked to provide in these letters. Twenty-three o

twenty-ve commitments or central government, due by December 2011, had been

met by that month. The ChancellorsAutumn Statement 2011,2 in November 2011,

announced additional commitments, specically supporting economic growth

(see Part Four).

1.3 Alongside the standard requirements, the Government has also made a series ocommitments about service-specic data releases in areas including crime and justice,

international development, health, education and transport.3 Examples o recently

published data include sentencing data by court, and GP prescribing data by practice.


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Implementing transparency Part One 13

Governance arrangements

1.4 The Cabinet Oce is the lead policy department, with the ollowing main roles:

Overall coordination and monitoring. This includes dening the scope othe agenda and ormulating next steps. The Cabinet Oce has completed a

consultation on open data and is preparing a White Paper or spring 2012. It

monitors departmental compliance with transparency commitments and reports

progress to the Public Sector Transparency Board.

Secretariat to the Public Sector Transparency Board. The board advises,

supports and challenges public bodies in implementing transparency. It is

designed to ensure that users and experts have a voice in how transparency

initiatives are implemented.

Bringing together Whitehall ofcials to embed transparency across

government. The Cabinet Oce arranges a practitioners group and a senior

ocials group.

Shared responsibility with HM Treasury or policy and guidance to

departments on the standard transparency releases. HM Treasury leads on

policy or spending-related releases, while the Cabinet Oce leads on the other

standard releases outlined in the Prime Ministers letters on transparency.

Figure 1

Key standard transparency requirements or all government departments

Commitments in Prime Ministers letter to

government departments (May 2010)

Additional commitments in Prime Minister s

letter to Secretaries o State (July 2011)

New items o central government spending over

25,000 published monthly

All items o spending to include plain English

descriptions o their scope and purpose

All new central government contracts and tender

documents or contracts over 10,000

Spending on government procurement cards or

transactions o more than 500

Names, grades, job titles and pay rates or senior

civil servants and non-departmental public body

oicials with salaries higher than 58,200

All depar tments to work with Cabinet O ice to

produce an action plan or improving data quality

and comparability

Organograms or government departments

and agencies including all sta positions in a

common ormat

Source: Prime Ministers letters to government departments (May 2010) and Secretaries of State (July 2011)


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14 Part One Implementing transparency

1.5 Although the Cabinet Oce undertakes a lead role, other organisations haveresponsibilities that contribute to the agendas success, including other departments

who are responsible or their own data releases (Figure 2). Responsibilities or some

important elements o programme management are not clear. The Cabinet Oce did

not prepare an overall policy impact assessment at the outset, and there has been no

systematic eort to assess the costs o implementing transparency initiatives or the

benets that result.

Figure 2

Governance arrangements in central government or implementing

transparencyPublic body Key responsibilities

HM Treasury Leads on policy and issues guidance or standard spending-related

transparency commitments.

Department or Communities and

Local Government

Published The Code o Recommended Practice or Local Authorities

on Data Transparency,1 outlining its expectations o what local

authorities should publish.

Selected depar tments Work with the Cabinet O ice to agree scope o commitments in

Prime Ministers letters on transparency. Responsible or releasing

agreed data.

Operate sector-speciic transparency boards, which advise

departments on implementation.

The National Archives Has central pol icy responsibility or the re-use o public sector

inormation. Regulates and sets standards on the use and re-use o

public sector inormation and inormation management. Promotes

the re-use o public sector inormation through the UK Government

Licensing Framework and the Open Government Licence.

Inormation Commissioners Oice Regulates inormation rights legislation, including the Freedom o

Inormation Act. In the light o the transparency agenda, the Act is

being amended as part o the post-legislative review process to

create a new public right to data.

NOTE

1 Department or Communities and Local Government,The Code of Recommended Practice for Local Authoritieson Data Transparency, September 2011, available at www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/

pd/1997468.pd

Source: National Audit Office


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Implementing transparency Part Two 15

Part Two

Progress o implementing transparency

2.1 This Part uses the drat public data principles as the basis to consider progress

o implementing the transparency agenda. The principles are not Government policy,but were developed by the Public Sector Transparency Board in June 2010 to highlight

areas o good practice, including:

promoting use o the Open Government Licence enabling unrestricted re-use

o public data;

use o a single government portal, www.data.gov.uk, or public data;

encouraging data release in ormats enabling easy analysis and reprocessing;

developing data inventories so that it is clear what inormation is available; and

ensuring releases are demand-led, and thereore responsive to the public.

2.2 The section also reviews areas o programme management which are crucial

to securing value or money, including the Governments understanding o the costs,

benets and risks o implementing transparency.

Licensing

2.3 The Government has made signicant progress in developing a non-restr ictive

Open Government Licence, and encouraging its adoption. Licensing is central to

promoting access and allowing data to be reused. The Open Government Licence,

launched in September 2010, orms part o the UK Government Licensing Frameworkand permits ree, permanent, non-exclusive access to material made available under the

licence. Analysis o data sets catalogued within www.data.gov.uk shows that 86 per cent

are available under the Open Government Licence (Figure 3 overlea).


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16 Part Two Implementing transparency

Use o a single government portal (www.data.gov.uk)

2.4 To acilitate access to public data, the previous Government launched the

www.data.gov.uk website, in January 2010, which indexes data releases in a single

searchable portal. The number o data sets indexed on www.data.gov.uk has grown

rom 2,500 in January 2010 to 7,865 by December 2011.

2.5 Although the volume o inormation catalogued by www.data.gov.uk has expanded,

realising its intended benets depends on:

whether the website links to as ull a range as possible o disclosable data. Owning

public bodies are responsible or linking data to the website. However, due to thelack o publication o data inventories (see section 2.12), it is not possible to assess

what proportion o the ull range o disclosable data is linked to the site; and

the structure and design o the website. For example, descriptive inormation about

each data release is currently not standardised and incomplete. Users will thereore

nd it dicult to identiy data sets that may be most useul.

Percentage

Figure 3

Licences for data sets on www.data.gov.uk

Source: Cabinet Office

0

20

40

60

80

100

UK Open

Government

Licence

Other/unknown Met Office UK

Climate Projections

Licence

86

131


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Figure 4

Formats of data resources on www.data.gov.uk

Machine-readable, non-proprietary

(e.g. csv) 68%

Machine-readable, but proprietary

(e.g. MS Excel) 19%

Format uses open standards

from World Wide Web consortium,

to enable linking (e.g. rdf) 7%

Non-machine readable

(e.g. jpeg, pdf) 6%

Source: National Audit Office analysis of Cabinet Office data

2.6 Since its public launch in January 2010, www.data.gov.uk has had more than1.75 million visits. However, rom May to November 2011, 82 per cent o all users

let www.data.gov.uk having only accessed either the home page or the data page.

This indicates that they did not nd the inormation they were seeking, although

this does not refect other potential access points or the data, or example linked

third party websites or applications. The Cabinet Oce has received user eedback

that the websites navigation and interace lack usability and appeal. It is currently

upgrading www.data.gov.uk, to include better search unctionality, a clearer standard

taxonomy o the inormation held and designing the catalogue entry process to limit

the scope or errors.

Format o data releases

2.7 How ar data can be easily analysed, reused and linked to other data sets depends

on its ormat. Three-quarters o the 13,000 data resources held on www.data.gov.uk are in

a machine-readable, non-proprietary ormat, meaning that they can be easily reprocessed

(Figure 4). Developers advised us that these attributes are sucient or the majority o

tasks they would normally need to undertake to develop applications.


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Compliance with specifc guidance on data sets

2.8 Standardising data enables comparative analysis. The Government has provided

guidance on the various standard data releases to encourage common structures.

One example is HM Treasury guidance on monthly itemised spending data, which

species content and provides direction on the timing o release, redactions, internal

review processes and data hosting arrangements. Mandatory content includes correctly

ormatted dates, amounts, expense types and suppliers.

2.9 Departments have complied with most mandatory elements o this guidance.

O 100 departmental spend data sets we reviewed, 78 per cent o the mandatory data

elds were ully compliant. The vast majority o non-compliant elds related to ormatting

issues. Other non-compliance related to expense types and expense areas not being

easily understood, hindering comparative analysis.

2.10 According to Treasury guidance, spend data should be published by the last

working day o the month ollowing the month to which the data relates. However, by the

end o 2011, 11 o 17 departments had not published data or November 2011 and seven

had not yet published the spend data or October 2011.

2.11 From September 2011, the updated guidance requires departments to include

brie plain English descriptions explaining the purpose o all transactions, to give more

contextual inormation. In the December 2011 releases, 8 o 11 departments included

a description eld in some orm in their releases but only our ully met the plain Englishrequirement by providing a clear description o all items listed.4

Using data inventories

2.12 The drat public data principles state that public bodies should maintain and

publish inventories providing accurate, up-to-date records o data holdings, including

inormation on ormats, accuracy and availability. Without these inventories, users

will not know the ull range o data collected and potentially available or release. The

Cabinet Oce has not yet provided operational guidance on how data inventories

should be developed. HM Revenue & Customs was the only department we identied

that has published a comprehensive list o data holdings with inormation on ormats,

accuracy and availability.5

Responsiveness to demand

2.13 The drat public data principles set a clear expectation that data releases, and

their ormats, should be demand-led. Nine departments told us that they have actively

considered public demand, or example through ormal consultations, orums on

websites including www.data.gov.uk, and analysis o correspondence, parliamentary

questions, media enquiries and Freedom o Inormation requests. There are some

examples o departments specically engaging with developers, or example throughworkshops or representation on some sector boards.


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2.14 The Cabinet Oce did not engage with the public to establish demand orthe standard data releases outlined in the Prime Ministers letters, but did consult

with developers and industry to identiy the additional releases announced in the

Autumn Statement 20116 (see paragraph 4.1).

2.15 None o the departments reported signicant spontaneous public demand or

the standard dataset releases. For example, page views or transparency data on the

Ministry o Justice website represented just 0.02 per cent o the overall site trac rom

April to September 2011. Service-specic releases have attracted greater interest. The

Department or Educations school website tool has received on average 45,000 views

per month in the rst two months since its release in September 2011. By comparison,

the transparency page on the Departments website, which includes links to its standarddata sets, received on average 600 views per month in the period rom April 2011

to October 2011. However, departmental gures do not include users o third party

websites or applications.

Understanding costs and benefts

Costs

2.16 Dierent types o data release have dierent cost implications, but neither the

Cabinet Oce nor other departments routinely collect data to monitor the additional

costs o transparency initiatives. The Government has assumed that the standard

releases required o all departments incur zero or very low costs, because they are

releasing inormation already held. Although this report does not estimate total costs,

this section illustrates some o the departmental and central costs incurred.

Departmental sta costs or standard releases

2.17 Departments noted that the biggest cost or standard releases was sta time

and that they had no systems to record that sta time oten a small element in many

ocials jobs. Eight departments, however, provided estimates o sta costs associated

with preparing and publishing the standard transparency requirements in 2011-12.

The costs range rom 53,000 to 500,000. These represent a lower bound or thecost o standard releases because they only capture sta costs and do not include,

or example, costs o upgrading IT systems or payments to contractors. While these

costs are low, relative to the total spending o the departments, they are incurred by

administrative unctions, such as Human Resources and Finance, where costs are

being cut signicantly.


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www.data.gov.uk2.18 The www.data.gov.uk website was originally run by the Central Oce o Inormation

and received unding o 1.2 million in 2010-11 rom the Department or Business,

Innovation and Skills. In 2011-12, the project was brought within the Cabinet Oce, and

urther engagement activity with stakeholders increased the annual running costs to

2 million. The Cabinet Oce hopes that improvements to the website (see paragraph 2.6)

will increase eciency and lower costs.

Costs o service-specifc releases

2.19 In addition to the costs o implementing standard requirements, departments with

sector-specic transparency commitments incur additional costs. Examples include:

the National Policing Improvement Agency produced street-level crime maps at a

cost o 300,000 and estimates the annual running costs or hosting, supporting

and maintaining the crime map site at more than 150,000.7 The Agency has

budgeted 216,000 in 2011-12 to urther develop the website, including linking

crime data to police and justice outcomes; and

the Department or International Development estimates that to deliver the

commitment to provide ull inormation on international development projects

with a value o more than 500 by January 2011, it incurred capital costs o

250,000, administrative set-up costs o 156,000 and has ongoing annual

running costs o 64,000.

2.20 While the above examples incurred relatively modest additional costs to make

existing inormation more publicly available, greater costs would be associated with

substantially developing new systems to provide public inormation where there are

currently gaps. The case examples in Part Three illustrate that in many sectors existing

inormation does not currently support individual choice or promote accountability.

Benefts

2.21Although the Government has wide-ranging objectives or transparency, ew

attempts have yet been made to monitor emerging benets. In its Making Open Data

Realconsultation, the Cabinet Oce identied six categories o potential benetsrom transparency,8 and its Open or Business website provides some examples o

businesses beneting rom open data.9 However, it is not yet using the six categories to

set out what would constitute success, to systematically track benets, or to promote

rigorous measurement, including identiying unintended consequences.

2.22 We asked all departments whether they had identied emerging benets rom

the transparency agenda. Seven departments told us that benets had materialised,

although they could not quantiy them. Examples include cost reductions in travel and

subsistence spending and identiying and resolving data quality problems.


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Risks and unintended consequences

Privacy

2.23 Linking data sets is central to the transparency agenda. While it can be expected

to generate benets, it might also mean that personal inormation is disclosed without

consent. The Government commissioned a review to consider the compatibility o

transparency and privacy.10 The review made 14 recommendations, or example, about

governance processes and research into anonymisation techniques. The Government

has not yet responded to the review.

2.24 Some existing releases, such as reoending data in criminal justice and GPprescribing data by practice, are based on individual-level data sets. For these releases,

the Ministry o Justice and the Department o Health respectively have carried out privacy

impact assessments to identiy and manage risks. Published data has been aggregated to

protect anonymity by banding data and so protecting individuals identities.

Fraud

2.25There are raud risks related to the release o itemised spending transaction data.

For example, raudsters can draw on such inormation in attempting to redirect payments

made to legitimate suppliers. The Audit Commission has reported that councils detected

rauds o this type amounting to 7 million in 2010-11. Such risks can, however, bemitigated by eective nancial controls which oiled 20 million o raud attempts in the

same period.11

2.26The Government has taken steps to raise the prole o raud prevention in local

government, including the publication o a raud prevention strategy addressing the need

or better prevention and enorcement.12 In addition, the Department or Communities and

Local Government has reerred local authorities to raud prevention advice published by

the Chartered Institute o Public Finance and Accountancy.13

Data quality

2.27The Cabinet Oce requirement or all departments to produce data quality action

plans by November 2011 has been deerred. The overall transparency agenda involves

public bodies releasing multiple types o inormation. The range covers data approved

as ocial statistics, which are subject to data protocols and reviews, to data sets taken

directly rom operational systems. There is variation in the intended accuracy o data sets,

and degrees o control. In some cases, there are judgements to be made between the

speed o release and data quality. The Treasurys guidance on itemised spending data

states explicitly that to produce timely data, inormation should be released as it was

originally recorded in nancial systems, unless there are material changes to the data.

Disclosures about data quality or these releases are not required.14 However, in January

2011 the Treasury required all main departments to produce data quality improvement

plans outlining steps to improve the standardisation and quality o spend data.


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22 Part Three Implementing transparency

Part Three

Aligning transparency with choice andaccountability

3.1 The Governments reorm programme promotes greater choice and accountability.

Transparency is central to these reorms and the Government has said that it will

ensure that key data about public services, user satisaction and the perormance o all

providers rom all sectors is in the public domain in an accessible orm. This will include

data on user satisaction, spending, perormance and equality.15

3.2 To support individuals in choosing appropriate providers and holding public

bodies and providers to account, we consider that the ollowing types o inormation

are needed:

Descriptive inormation about providers, or example location and provider type.

Objective, standardised activity and perormance inormation that sets out the

levels o services provided and their quality.

Inormation about perormance based on peoples experiences, or example user

satisaction inormation.

Inormation on spending, enabling analysis o links between spending

and perormance.

Contextual inormation about data, including quality disclosure, to

assist interpretation.

3.3 The current state o inormation release, according to these criteria, is patchy. There

is variation in how ar current data helps people to make inormed choices, and helps

communities and neighbourhoods to understand the perormance o public services in

their area. The ollowing examples illustrate this variation.


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Implementing transparency Part Three 23

Choice in individual services

Inormation to help choose schools

3.4 The Government stated in its recent schools White Paper that parents ability

to choose a school will be enhanced by more standardised inormation on schools.16

The Department or Education (the Department) has developed a schools per ormance

web tool that brings together established and new data releases in a single location

on its website.17

3.5 The website helps parents to compare schools at the same stage o education,

based on most types o inormation needed to support choice as set out inparagraph 3.2. The tool provides:

key descriptive inormation, including school type and capacity, pupil and

workorce characteristics;

comparable inormation on school perormance, including exam results or all key

stages and new data on pupil perormance, by low, middle and high attainers.

The site also links to Osted reports and inspection results; and

inormation on school nances. The tool provides income and spending data, or

example, spending on teaching sta.

3.6 The website does not provide parents or childrens eedback on their experiences

o the school. Users can, however, access Osted inspection reports, which oten

contain summaries o the views o parents, children and governors. Osted also

launched its Parent View website in October 2011 to collect and report parents

eedback on schools.18

3.7 The inormation provided is standardised and comparable across all schools in

England, with the ollowing exceptions:

Spending data or academies is not recorded according to the categorisation

used or school-level nancial data included in the tool. The Department intends

to publish academies nancial data on a comparable basis in 2012. Where

academies are ederated under one academy trust, the data will be made

available at academy trust level rather than individual school level.

The Department does not col lect or publish certain data or independent schools,

or example on key stage 2 attainment (because key stage 2 tests and external

marking are optional), or pupil characteristics.


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3.8 To support parental choice, the school perormance tables provide in one placepreviously diuse perormance data. The level o public interest in that inormation

has increased. The Department has reported that interaction with the website tool

increased by 84 per cent in the last year, with 2.43 million views rom September to

November 2011, compared with 1.3 million views or the corresponding inormation

in the same period o 2010.

Inormation to help choose care services

3.9 The Governments objective is or all those eligible or ongoing community based

social care to be provided with a personal budget by April 2013, to give publicly

unded users o social care services greater choice and control over their own care.With personal budgets, eligible recipients requiring community based care services

can purchase services rom public, private or third sector providers. With access to

the right inormation, it can be expected that care users, or those choosing providers

on their behal, can make better use o the discretion inherent in personal budgets.

This is particularly important, given recent reports raising concerns about some users

experiences o care.19

3.10 Many adult social care users do not currently have all the necessary inormation to

make inormed choices about care providers. This includes:

Basic inormation about care providers. This data is currently provided by localauthorities and the Care Quality Commission.

Comparable inormation about the quality o providers. The Care Quality

Commission registers and inspects social care providers based on 16 minimum

essential standards o quality and saety. The Commission publishes results or all

providers on its website. However, the standard inormation does not dierentiate

on the basis o quality, beyond the minimum standards.

User eedback on providers. Some local authorities are providing, or are planning

to provide, websites that capture and share users experiences o care. However,

not all authorities provide this inormation and it is not standardised.

Inormation about the price o care services. It can be dicult to provide price

inormation, because prices dier across the country and vary according to the

specic, and oten complex, care needs o the individual user, as well as the

service oered by the care provider. One local authority we visited is planning to

provide inormation on price ranges on their website. Another will ask users o

their web tool to rst sel-assess their needs and care budget and then suggest

providers that provide services within these budgets.

3.11 Inormation supporting choice o community based care services is very varied

across local authorities. There is currently no standard inormation on the relative quality

o registered providers. I expanding user choice is to result in more cost-eectiveservice provision, users will need a broader range o comparable inormation

to inorm their choice.


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Accountability or neighbourhood and community services

Police crime map

3.12 In June 2010, the Government announced that it would publish crime data at street

level to allow the public to better hold the police to account. 20 The police crime map

website was launched on 31 January 2011 to ull this commitment.21

3.13 The crime map website provides the ollowing inormation:

Basic inormation about neighbourhood policing team and local police orce.

The crime map proles members o local neighbourhood police teams and

provides contact details and inormation about beat meetings, where residents

can communicate directly with their neighbourhood team.

Comparable inormation about crime levels. The crime map provides monthly data

or 11 crime categories or each street with eight or more postal addresses, unless

there are additional privacy concerns. Users can compare crime levels with other

neighbourhoods, police orce areas or national averages. The Government has

pledged to develop the crime map urther so that by May 2012, the public can

see police actions taken and justice outcomes or each crime.

Links to Her Majestys Inspectorate o Constabulary police orce proles, which

include victim satisaction scores, and details o nances and spending, or eachpolice orce. However, this inormation is not broken down to ward level and the

public is not able to compare spending inormation at the neighbourhood level to

consider neighbourhood resourcing and deployment decisions, and to compare

these with perormance.

3.14 Although the crime map allows the public to view more detailed inormation on

the location o criminal activity than ever beore, there are two key concerns about the

quality and accuracy o the data:

To protect privacy, street-level crime maps aggregate crime data and map it to

an anonymous point, typically the geographical centre o a street. For example,

where there are ewer than eight postal addresses on a street, the crimes may be

repositioned to a nearby street. This can be misleading i crimes are attributed to

a dierent location rom where they were reported, or example a nightclub. To

mitigate this problem, the crime map has, since January 2012, included locations

such as nightclubs to which crimes can be attributed.

While the Home Oce sets central standards governing how the police should

record crime, several reports have highlighted concerns about lack o consistent

recording o crime across police orces.22 As the data on the crime map is provided

by each police orce, any quality issues with the way the crimes are recorded are

replicated within the crime map. The crime map website includes a disclaimer

about these general data quality issues, but does not link to specic inormation

that enables a user to judge the robustness o recorded crime data in their area.


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3.15 Beore the launch o the crime map, the National Policing Improvement Agencyconducted research, which showed that people ound local police inormation and

crime maps inormative, and that greater knowledge o recorded local crime would not

increase ear o crime. However, while the Home Oce is taking steps to monitor and

support the development o the crime map, it is not undertaking a systematic evaluation

to determine its impact. Given the nature o the crime map, it may potentially drive wide-

ranging behavioural responses. Existing sources may permit some relevant analyses:

the British Crime Survey, or example, provides the Home Oce with an opportunity to

analyse any dierences in peoples experiences or reporting o crime, depending on

their reported awareness or use o crime maps.

3.16 The police crime map represents a signicant step in providing inormation thatcan support better local accountability o police services. There has been a high level

o demand rom the public with an estimated 47 million visits between February and

December 2011. Closer alignment between the crime maps and reporting o police

activity and resource use would tighten accountability urther. Evaluating the maps

eects intended and unintended would help assess the benets and manage risks.

Local government accountability

3.17 Under the Coalition Government, the Department or Communities and Local

Government has prioritised decentralisation and localism. The Department expects local

communities and individuals to hold local public service bodies to account or theiruse o resources.23 There have been signicant changes in the types o inormation

that communities and individuals can access. Local authorities have been encouraged

to make new inormation transparent, while established rameworks or collecting and

reporting perormance inormation have been discontinued.

Transparency in local government

3.18 The Governments approach to encouraging transparency in local government is

set out in its Code o Recommended Practice or Local Authorities on Data Transparency,

which it published in September 2011.24 It sets out minimum expectations or data release

among local public bodies. With respect to the requirement to publish expenditure over

500, all councils have published data on their spending transactions with one exception,

Nottingham City Council. We reviewed how ar other key elements o theCode have been

adopted, based on a sample o more than 200 English councils (Figure 5).


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3.19 There is variation in how ar councils provide relevant inormation. To an extent,

this refects that some Code elements were not part o the drat Code, and thereorethe Governments expectation o publication o these items is more recent. However,

even or items where inormation is published, many o the releases do not include all o

the inormation set out in the Code. For example, although 88 per cent o councils have

published senior pay inormation, more than hal o these releases do not describe the

numbers o sta reporting to them or the budgets that they control.

3.20 We also reviewed whether councils had published their expenditure data over

500 timeously and in machine-readable ormats. O the 202 councils we reviewed,

89 per cent have published the data by month, with one example o weekly releases and

91 per cent have published data in a non-proprietary, machine-readable ormat. At the

time o our review, 80 per cent had produced data rom the previous month, though in7 per cent o cases, spending transaction data were our or more months old.

Figure 5

Proportion of local authorities releasing data in the

Code of Recommended Practice

Percentage

NOTES

1 Based on a review of 202 local authority websites undertaken in November 2011.

2 Tender and contract information includes information published on external websites.

Source: National Audit Office analysis

0 20 40 60 80 100

Asset register

Organisational charts

Contracts

Tenders

Senior pay

Committee minutes

Election results

Constitution 98

96

95

88

88

71

63

5


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Perormance inormation in local government3.21 While the Government has encouraged greater transparency in local government,

it has discontinued many o the existing arrangements or perormance reporting.

For example, the Government has stopped the National Indicator Set, along with some

o its component data collections such as the Place Survey. Existing repositories o

comparative data, such as the Audit Commissions OnePlace website, are no longer

supported or updated.

3.22The Department or Communities and Local Government (the Department) has

published a Single Data List cataloguing all o the data that councils must provide to

central government. However, the Department considers that the publication o this

inormation is not currently done in a way that allows or easy comparison betweencouncils across a range o service areas, making it hard or residents to assess relative

perormance and value or money.

3.23The Departments preerred approach is or the local government sector to address

this gap. The Local Government Association (LGA) in conjunction with local authorities is

developing an online tool, LG Inorm, which draws together comparative data to enable

perormance benchmarking and other analysis. The LGA expects to make the service

available to the public in September 2012. The tool currently includes approximately

750 metrics in total, covering a range o services.

3.24 In the uture, LG Inorm will allow local authorities to add voluntary additional datato the system. This is consistent with the principles o localism and reducing centrally

prescribed perormance data. However, voluntary data will need to be managed

careully i it is to provide meaningul inormation or perormance measurement and

accountability. For example, there is a tension between local bodies developing

their own measures o perormance and user satisaction, and the demands o the

public and local perormance managers or comparable, benchmarked inormation.

Such inormation requires uniorm standards and denitions.

3.25 Implementing greater transparency in local government provides new items

o nancial and operational inormation or the public. However, although the Code

o Recommended Practice provides direction, there are still signicant variations inhow councils report this inormation. The Government has discontinued established

perormance rameworks. It considers that it is primarily or councils themselves

to respond to citizens requirements, and or the sector as a whole to develop an

appropriate system to allow or perormance benchmarking. Through the LGA, the local

government sector is leading on a tool, LG Inorm, to address this issue, but this will not

be available to the public until September 2012. It is too early to determine whether this

will meet the perormance inormation needs o residents.


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Implementing transparency Part Four 29

Part Four

Aligning transparency with economic growth

4.1 A key objective o releasing more public sector inormation is to generate economic

growth. The Government made a series o announcements relating to this objective initsAutumn Statement 2011,25 including:

new open data commitments, such as real-time running inormation on trains

rom Network Rail, to support developing web-based applications enabling more

productive use o passengers time;

new commitments or licensing large data sets, including the Clinical Practice

Research Datalink service which will provide linked, non-identiable patient level

primary and secondary health data. The Government expects this to promote

growth in the lie sciences research sector, or example, by reducing the costs

o clinical trials;

commitments to consult, or example, on linking welare data to other public

and commercial data to develop data and analytics markets relating to

customer inormation;

new governance arrangements to oversee access to data held by trading unds

(see paragraph 4.7); and

establishing an Open Data Institute to develop business innovation and exploit

commercial opportunity rom releasing public data. The institute will receive

10 million unding rom the Technology Strategy Board over the current spending

review period, with matched unding rom industry and academia.

4.2 While most announcements were or uture commitments, the Government made

a series o data sets available with theAutumn Statement 2011, or example, detailed

weather observation and orecast inormation (see paragraph 4.11). However, many

outlined measures continue to be developed. It is thereore too early to conclude on

their likely success. This section instead considers the variations in estimates o the

economic value o public sector inormation and reviews some o the arrangements the

Government has announced to stimulate growth rom public data.


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30 Part Four Implementing transparency

Estimates o economic value o public sector inormation

4.3 Few studies have attempted to estimate the economic value o public sector

inormation. Studies that have been carried out suggest a strong strategic economic

case or enabling greater access to public sector inormation. However, the scale o

the various estimates varies widely, owing to dierences in approaches to benets

estimation and the assumptions o the economic models used.

4.4 A recent review o the literature on reusing public sector inormation put the value

o public sector inormation in the European Union at around 140 billion a year. The

author based the estimates on extrapolating rom studies o the total economic impacts

o geospatial inormation in Australia and New Zealand.26 Based on this review, the

Government derived an estimate o 16 billion or the current total economic value o UK

public sector inormation.27

4.5 The Oce o Fair Trading produced an earlier study in 2006 on the commercial use

o public sector inormation.28 They surveyed more than 400 public bodies to identiy

the income generated rom public data release. They also commissioned research to

estimate the economic value o UK public sector inormation. Based primarily on the

survey results, the contractors estimated this value to be about 590 million in 2005.

4.6 Both studies have limitations. The Oce o Fair Trading report notes that top-down

approaches, such as that used in the EU-wide estimate, tend to overstate the economic

value o public service inormation. This is because they do not actor in reasonablesubstitutes available i that inormation does not exist or is prohibitively expensive.29

Furthermore, the assumption o similar public sector inormation markets is crude given

signicant known dierences between countries. However, the Oce o Fair Trading

report is likely to understate the economic value o public sector inormation. Their

survey, and thereore the economic estimate, did not include all bodies likely to hold

data o economic value or example NHS trusts and local authorities. The Oce o Fair

Tradings report also pre-dates the extra datasets that have been released since 2006

as open data. When estimates o economic value vary this widely, it is dicult to assess

the scale o eort or targeting needed to best build on that value.


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Implementing transparency Part Four 31

Getting extra value rom public sector inormation

4.7 Data expected to have economic value includes data that has not previously

been made available, and data that has been traded but could be released under

less restrictive terms. Examples o the ormer include the healthcare inormation to

be made available to support the lie sciences sector and other health services. The

Department o Healths business case or a new Clinical Practice Research Datalink

estimates benets o 446 million, with costs o 275 million over ten years. The benet

gure mainly comprises eciency savings rom reducing the costs o medical studies

and does not include wider economic benets, such as potential job creation in the lie

sciences industry. The Government intends to charge users to cover the costs o the

data linking process.

4.8 For the release o practice level prescribing data, the impact assessment estimates

the costs o the publication to be 450,000 in the rst year and 100,000 in subsequent

years. The Government expects that the release will lead to increased innovation in the

pharmaceutical industry. It also expects that publication will generate eciency savings

as increased transparency o prescribing patterns encourages better prescribing.

However, the impact assessment does not monetise the economic benets, describing

them as dicult to measure and speculative.

4.9 Data known to have economic value include those already traded. Data held by

the Ordnance Survey, Met Oce, Land Registry and Companies House trading unds

accounted or 60 per cent o all income received or public data in 2006. A recent

academic paper, based on the 2006 Oce o Fair Trading survey o income earned rom

public data, estimates potential gains rom moving rom charged-or to an open data

regime in the UK o between 1.6 billion and 6.0 billion a year.30 Their data are particularly

economically valuable and are oten reerred to as core reerence data. This includes

maps, address databases, land records and weather data, which provide opportunities

or linking to other data sets to enhance their value. However, established licensing

arrangements can provide barriers to use, limiting the potential or economic benets.

4.10 Trading unds must break even over a time period specied in their Trading Fund

Order. Current revenue rom selling data, as opposed to other services, varies by

trading und. A 2008 study commissioned by the Department or Business, Enterprise

and Regulatory Reorm (now the Department or Business, Innovation and Skills) and

HM Treasury estimated that the Met Oce would lose around 1 per cent o its revenue

were it to make raw data available or ree, while at the other extreme, the Ordnance

Survey would lose 26 per cent o its revenue rom data sales to non-government

sources.31 The potential nancial implications o ree data release thereore vary widely

across the unds.


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32 Part Four Implementing transparency

4.11 As a rst step, the Government has announced some releases rom these tradingunds as open data. Examples include weather orecast and real-time observation

datasets, and prices paid or residential property in England and Wales. The business

case or this release estimated economic benets o 60 million, with additional wider

social welare benets o between 6 million and 27 million, over 20 years. This

compares with costs o about 11 million over that period. Releasing the Met Oce

weather data sets make up 84 per cent o the total economic benets.32 We tested

whether the business case complied with good practice in central government, and

ound that:

neither the Met Oce nor the Cabinet Oce has assessed the impact o releasing

weather data as open data on the wider market, so the benets included in thebusiness case are highly uncertain;

it does not cover costs other than implementation costs and the loss o income

due to ree release o data sets previously charged or. For example, additional

revenue loss may be expected rom increased service competition rom new

commercial applications; and

or the nancial year 2012-13, the estimated revenue losses or the trading unds lie

between 5,000 or the Met Oce and 600,000 or the Land Registry. Based on

revenue currently obtained rom statutory and commercial data sales, this suggests

that the planned releases represent only a part o the economically valuable data

sets held across the our trading unds.

4.12 The Government announced in itsAutumn Statement 2011 new governance

arrangements or the our trading unds. They will orm a Public Data Group and

continue their trading unctions. A separate Data Strategy Board will promote release o

open data. It will receive at least 7 million in the current spending review period to buy

data rom the Public Data Group or wider public sector or ree release. In uture, the

Data Strategy Board will seek to agree a proportion o dividends rom the Public Data

Group, to increase its unding. The Cabinet Oce has not yet produced broader policy

on open data rom trading unds.


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Implementing transparency Appendix One 33

Appendix One

Methodology

Method Purpose

Survey o and interviews with 16 departments33

and wider stakeholders described in Figure 2

To collect inormation on transparency arrangements

Interviews with the Cabinet Oices

Transparency team

To determine the Cabinet O ices role in the

transparency agenda, and to collect inormation on the

progress o implementation

Document review o central and departmental

strategic and operational plans or transparency

initiatives

To supplement interv iew evidence

Case studies. Analysis o schools, community

based care services or adults, police, and local

government sectors

To review case examples o how inormation is

provided to the public or accountability purposes, and

in support o wider reorms

Consultation with developers and the media To understand the perspectives o intermediaries in

realising potential beneits o transparency

Review o central and local government

data releases

To assess compliance with Treasury guidance on

departmental spending data, and or councils with the

Department or Communities and Local Governments

Code o Recommended Practice


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34Appendix Two Implementing transparency

Appendix Two

Timeline o transparency achievements anduture aspirations

Prepared by the Cabinet Ofce

The Transparency Agenda is a coalition pledge championed by the Prime Minister to

make the Government more open. Every department o state and each arms-length

body shares responsibility as part o this Governments drive to make public sector

organisations more accountable to the British public. Much has been achieved since

we have gone about opening up Whitehall and the wider public sector, changing the

relationship between the citizen and state by giving people access to data that matters to

them. Greater transparency enables accountability, improves choices, increases public

service productivity and quality as well as encouraging social and economic growth.

As a result o the work so ar the public now has unprecedented access to data in

government spend, transport, health, justice, crime and education. Much o this

inormation is available on www.data.gov.uk, one o the largest government data

resources in the world. We have also positioned Open Data as an integral part o the

UKs economic growth strategy, announcing an ambitious package o measures in the

ChancellorsAutumn Statement 2011.

Transparency and Open Data represent new ways o doing government. Thereore,

as this agenda develops, we will continue to build the economic benet case,

demonstrating how these core operating principles can lead to new economic growth

and greater eciency within the public sector.


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Implementing transparency Appendix Two 35

Achieved

May 2010 First Prime Minister let ter on transparency which included commitments or

departments to publish senior sta salary details and data on central and local

government spending.

June 2010 Public Sector Transparency Board, chaired by Minister or the Cabinet O ice

and consisting o public sector data specialists, meets or the irst time to drive

orward transparency agenda.

February 2011 Launch o police.uk by the Home O ice which gives the public unprecedented

access to crime data across the whole o England and Wales. Over 47 million

visits since inception.

July 2011 Second Prime Minister let ter on transparency which set out commitments to

publish data across public services including health, transport and criminal justice.

The letter also included measures to improve the quality o government data.

Data on apprenticeships paid or by the Government released by Department

or Education.

August 2011 Launch o Making Open Data Real consultation which set out proposals or the

Governments Transparency and Open Data Strategy.

AugustOctober 2011 Nearly ive hundred responses to the Making Open Data Real consultation received

rom a variety o sectors such as health, industry, local and central government.

October 2011 Reo ending rates data published by Ministry o Justice.

Free government data sets rom Transport Direct published alongside road works

data on strategic road network published by Department or Transport.

Hospital complaints data published by NHS Inormation Centre.

November 2011 Launch o Open Data Measures in the Autumn Statement. These included

establishing a Data Strategy Board and a Public Data Group that will maximise

the value o the data rom the Met Oice, Ordnance Survey, the Land Registry

and Companies House.

Sentencing by court data made available by Ministry o Justice.

December 2011 7,865 data sets on www.data.gov.uk.

Twenty-three out o twenty-ive commitments or central government in the Prime

Ministers letters due by December 2011 are met.

Inaugural meeting o the Transparency Senior Oicials group which coordinates

progress o transparency agenda across individual government departments.

Publication o prescribing data by GP practices by NHS Inormation Centre.

Publication o clinical outcomes data by NHS Inormation Centre.

Real-time data on strategic road network (speed congestion) and weekly rail

timetable data released by Department or Transport.


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Achieved continued

January 2012 Publication o summary o responses to Making Open Data Real consultat ion

alongside substantive consultation responses.

Department or Education brings together school spending data, school

perormance data, pupil cohort data and Osted judgements, in a parent-riendly

portal, searchable by postcode.

March 2012 Cabinet O ice and Department or Business, Innovation and Skil ls publishes the

terms o reerence or Data Strategy Board.

Department or Transport releases a range o highways and traic data via the

Roadworks website, which includes data to help reduce congestion and enable

business to make more predictable travel and logistics decisions.

Publication oOpen or Business which set out how open data is already

uelling UK businesses, creating jobs and supporting economic growth. This

was accompanied by an interactive site to enable other organisations to tell

government how they are using public data to create innovative new business

models, products and services.

Planned

April 2012 Network Rai l and the Traveline will work with the transpor t industry to make

available timetable and real-time train and bus inormation to support the

development o innovative applications to improve passenger journeys.

Publication o the business plan or the Open Data Institute (ODI). The ODI willinnovate, exploit and research the opportunities or the United Kingdom created

by the Governments Open Data policy. In addition the ODI will develop the

economic beneits case and business model or Open Data.

United Kingdom to take over co-chairmanship o the Open Government

Partnership rom the United States. The Open Government Partnership is a

multilateral initiative with more than 50 member countries that aims to secure

concrete commitments rom governments to promote transparency, empower

citizens, ight corruption, and harness new technologies to promote prosperity

and reduce inequalities.

Department o Health to release data about the quality o postgraduate

medical education.

Clinical audits and NHS sta satisaction data released by Department o Health.

Mid-2012 Cabinet O ice to publish Transparency and Open Data products set ting out

the Governments vision or embedding Transparency and Open Data as core

operating principles o the public services. These products will include a ormal

response to the Kieron OHara report on privacy and transparency.

Cabinet Oice will continue to build an evidence base to demonstrate how

increased transparency can promote economic growth and greater eiciency

within the public sector.

Individual departmental Open Data Strategies due or publication.

www.data.gov.uk will be rereshed alongside ongoing work with government

departments to help them improve quality o their metadata (inormation about

the data) and to increase the portolio o their published datasets.

Home Oice to release Crime Mapper to Justice Mapper data.


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Implementing transparency Appendix Two 37

Planned continued

June 2012 Depar tment or Education to open up access to anonymised data rom the

National Pupil Database.

September 2012 Health and Social Care Inormation Centre will provide a service link to primary

and secondary healthcare datasets to reinorce the UKs position as a global

centre or research and analytics and boost UK lie sciences.

NHS Inormation Centre will publish urther prescribing data.

Open Data Institute due to open.

During and

beyond 2012

Department or Work and Pensions and Cabinet Oice via the new Welare

Sector Transparency Board will consider opportunities or securely linking welare

datasets to other government and commercial datasets to increase their value to

the industry.

Department or Work and Pensions will consult on the content o anonymised

it note data rom 2012 to drive innovation in the occupational health sector and

improve management o sickness absence.

Department or Work and Pensions will design the Universal Credit system so that

aggregate beneits data can be published during the irst year o the live running o

the system.

Department or Health will ensure all NHS patients can access their personal GP

records online by the end o this Parliament.

Department or Transport plans to legislate to give the Civil Aviation Authority thepower to publish data on the perormance o aviation service providers.

The Cabinet Oice will set up an Open Data User Group (ODUG) to support the

work o the new Data Strategy Board (DSB). The ODUG will advise the DSB on

public sector data that should be prioritised or release as open data.

Note: planned release dates are correct at the time o going to press.


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Specic responsibilities o departments are set out in a number o documents, includingthe Prime Ministers letters o May 2010, and July 2011, and in departmental Open Data

Strategies which detail current and planned data releases that departments themselves

are responsible or delivering. Open Data Strategies are due or publication or the rst

time later in the year and will be included in departments business plans and rereshed

yearly thereater.

The Cabinet Oce also has a small strategic team that aims to provide strategic

leadership on this agenda, and specically is responsible or:

Bringing together ocials rom across government to help promote and deliver

transparency agenda.

Advising the Government on the progress o the transparency agenda.

Providing a secretariat to the Transparency Board.

Providing guidance and approving departmental Open Data Strategies.

Managing and developing the www.data.gov.uk website.

Working with other departments such as the Ministry o Justice to look at the

legislative landscape around transparency agenda.

Setting up the Open Data User Group to provide advice on release o Open Data to

the Data Strategy Board.

Setting up the Open Data Institute.

Developing policy in areas specied in the timeline.

Cabinet Ofce

April 2012


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Implementing transparency Endnotes 39

Endnotes

1 Cabinet Oce, Transparency-overview. www.cabinetoce.gov.uk/content/

transparency-overview

2 HM Treasury,Autumn Statement 2011, available at http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/

autumn_statement.pd

3 Prime Ministers letter to Cabinet Ministers on transparency and open data,July 2011, available at www.number10.gov.uk/news/letter-to-cabinet-ministers-on-

transparency-and-open-data/

4 By February 2012, six departments had not yet provided their spending data or

December 2011.

5 Available at www.hmrc.gov.uk/transparency/implementation-plan.htm

6 HM Treasury, Autumn Statement 2011, available at http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/

autumn_statement.pd

7 This excludes sta costs o the National Policing Improvement Agency crimemap team.

8 Cabinet Oce, Making Open Data Real: A Public Consultation, August 2011.

9 The website is available at http://communities.maven-cast.com/pg/groups/3731

10 K OHara, Transparent Government, Not Transparent Citizens: A Report on Privacy

and Transparency or the Cabinet Ofce, Cabinet Oce, 2011.

11 Audit Commission, Protecting the public purse, 2011, p. 21.

12 Home Oce, Fighting Fraud Locally: The Local Government Fraud Strategy,

April 2012, available at www.homeoce.gov.uk/publications/agencies-public-

bodies/na/ghting-raud-locally-strategy/. The Department or Communities and

Local Government also

implementing transparency report from the nao

Documents